Wanadoo

Wanadoo is the former name of the ISP division of Orange SA, which is a subsidiary of France Télécom. It operated in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Mauritius, Madagascar, Lebanon, and Jordan. It ceased to operate as a worldwide brand on June 1, 2006, when it was replaced by Orange.

The origin of the name Wanadoo is subject to some controversy, as some maintain it came about in the late 1990s when many internet companies competed to choose "Yahoo" sounding names. However it might be that the name Wanadoo first appeared in an internal project at France Télécom, much in line with a number of other such projects such as Intranoo, Tatoo, Netatoo and @noo.

Wanadoo was floated on the stock market on July 18, 2000. In 2000, Wanadoo also took over the major British ISP Freeserve, which had previously been part of the Dixons Group (now DSG International plc). Following the buy-out, Freeserve maintained its own branding for a while before finally changing to the Wanadoo name on April 28, 2004.

In the early 2000 Wanadoo expanded into the games industry by purchasing Index+. Wanadoo integrated Index+ into its new games division, Wanadoo Edition. On September 30, 2003, Wanadoo Edition was integrated into MC2 France and from this deal Wanadoo also became a 12% shareholder of Microïds.